Legend of Grimrock 2 - New Development Update

Hello all! We have been pushing hard on the development of Legend of Grimrock 2 and now we are going to have a brief but sweet summer break. But before we go a recap of what has been happening is in order!

The focus of work recently has been on the building blocks of the game, the monsters, puzzles, and environment assets. After the holiday break we are going to start putting the pieces together and building the (final) game world. (I put “final” in parenthesis because I know we are going to polish and tweak the levels to the very last moment before the game ships.)

With the added musclepower of Jyri and Jyri, we have been able to push an impossibly large amount of 3D models, animations and textures out of the oven in a very short time. For example, we have 16 complete new monsters and more is coming. Combined with the monsters from Grimrock 1 we have something like 40 unique monsters, although many of the old monsters won’t make a come back in the new game. The monsters of Grimrock 2 are also much more complex, many with multiple types of special attacks and unique AI behavior.

On the wallset side, we have seven completely new environments, more than double what we had in Grimrock 1. The amount of model files, material definitions and scripts is getting really tough to handle!

On the tech side, we have implemented water rendering and integrated a video player. After carefully evaluating our options we chose to use an open source WebM/VP8 video format. Being open source means that mods can also contain cinematic videos without licensing limitations. This was very important to us. The cinematics can also be played whenever needed, no longer just at the start and end of the game.

I unfortunately got bored with Legends of Grimrock rather quickly. The "nuts and bolts" aspect of the game was great, but it lacked a good storyline, character interactions, and immersive music. I hope the second one may be more inspired by for example "Lands of Lore" or "Stonekeep".

I think Stonekeep aged pretty poorly myself. I tried playing through it about two years ago, and I eventually quit about 2/3 through. Ugly and clunky as hell. I'll never understand the appeal, but to each his own.

I think Stonekeep aged pretty poorly myself. I tried playing through it about two years ago, and I eventually quit about 2/3 through. Ugly and clunky as hell. I'll never understand the appeal, but to each his own.

As can projection

I tried it a few months ago - and it was as atmospheric and endearing as ever. Nostalgia is an intangible force - but in terms of story and the charming FMV atmosphere, that still works far better than small bits of text here and there.

There's a lot of "production value" stuff in Stonekeep that keeps the game interesting - if you enjoy that sort of adventure/story approach.

It was never the best dungeon crawler out there - but it's still miles ahead of Grimrock - which was like playing Dungeon Master with an absurd amount of jump/timing puzzles.

But obviously, these things depend on what you enjoy - and Stonekeep isn't for everyone.

I tried it a few months ago - and it was as atmospheric and endearing as ever. Nostalgia is an intangible force - but in terms of story and the charming FMV atmosphere, that still works far better than small bits of text here and there.

There's a lot of "production value" stuff in Stonekeep that keeps the game interesting - if you enjoy that sort of adventure/story approach.

It was never the best dungeon crawler out there - but it's still miles ahead of Grimrock - which was like playing Dungeon Master with an absurd amount of jump/timing puzzles.

But obviously, these things depend on what you enjoy - and Stonekeep isn't for everyone.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
lol, character interaction in Lands of Lore?

What I hope they tweak and change is the character building. Too many choices that had no impact there.

I can think of many memorable characters that I interacted with in Lands of Lore. The Draracle, Baccata, Dawn, Paulson, Victor, etc. How many memorable ones did you interact with in Legends of Grimrock?

Definitely agree with you regarding character building. I particularly disliked the illogical aspects of it, such as how archers were most capable if you dumped all their skillpoints into strength.

Originally Posted by enm
I can think of many memorable characters that I interacted with in Lands of Lore. The Draracle, Baccata, Dawn, Paulson, Victor, etc. How many memorable ones did you interact with in Legends of Grimrock?

Definitely agree with you regarding character building. I particularly disliked the illogical aspects of it, such as how archers were most capable if you dumped all their skillpoints into strength.

I just wouldn't exactly call it interaction since you only got a few lines of self-unfurling dialogue out of any NPC. But yeah it was better in this respect than LoG.

Lands of Lore was among the best games of this kind. I ran through the whole series only a few years back and found the first enjoyable but I do not like trend of cutting out the party. Legend of Grimrock was fantastic. It's oldschool but in the same time modern. The atmosphere were incredible. It's the first time a game managed to get genuinely anxious and claustrophobic about being trapped in a dungeon.

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